Every badge on Graft means something specific, and someone at Graft has looked at the paper behind it. This guide explains how to earn each one, how to add a new qualification later, and, because people ask, exactly what is done by software and what is done by a person.
The short version. You upload your ID and a selfie, and a member of our team checks them and decides, usually within 24 hours. Once that is done you can add your qualifications, and our team checks each one too. Software handles the safe storage, the alerts and the clocks. It never decides whether you are who you say you are. A person does.
The badges, and what each one promises
- ID verified. A real person, checked against their ID by Graft. This is the green tick.
- Qualified. ID checked, plus a trade qualification that Graft has confirmed. This is the gold badge.
- Certified. ID checked, plus a recognised licence or trade test that Graft has confirmed.
Clients verify their ID too. A client has to be ID verified before they can accept an offer, which means the person hiring you has been checked as well.
Step 1: verify your ID
Open your profile and choose Identity verification, on the app or on graft.co.zw. You will be asked for two things, and both are required.
- A photo of your national ID or passport. A JPG, PNG, WebP or iPhone photo, or a PDF, up to 10 MB. All four corners should be in the picture, the text sharp, and the document not expired.
- A selfie. Take it live with your camera or upload a clear photo. Your face has to be fully visible, in good light, with nothing covering it.
Most rejections come from the same three things: a blurry photo, a document cut off at the edge, and a selfie taken in the dark. Take both photos near a window, hold the phone steady and check them before you send.
What happens the moment you submit
Several things happen by themselves, within seconds.
- Your files are checked by what is actually inside them, not by what they are called. A file that is not really a photo or a PDF is refused, so you find out straight away rather than days later.
- Both files go into private storage. They are not visible to other users, and they are not visible to clients you work with. Only our trust team can open them.
- Our team is alerted immediately, with a notification and an email, so nothing sits in a queue that nobody has been told about.
- You get a message confirming we have your documents.
What a person does
A member of our team opens your documents and does the part software cannot be trusted with. They check that the ID is real-looking, valid and not expired, that the name matches, and that the face on the selfie is the face on the ID. When our team opens a photo, it is rebuilt from scratch first, which strips out hidden data such as the location the photo was taken. A PDF containing anything that could run code is refused.
Nothing in this step is automated. We do not use software to decide who you are, because a wrong answer would either lock out an honest person or let a stranger in.
The result
- Approved. You are told straight away, and the green ID verified tick appears on your profile. If you are a worker you can now be found by clients who filter for verified professionals, and if you are a client you can accept offers.
- Not approved. You are shown the reason in plain words, for example that the document was cut off or the selfie was unclear. You can resubmit with new photos as many times as you need. There is no penalty.
Step 2: add your qualifications
Go to your profile and edit it, then find Qualifications and certificates. You can file a qualification as soon as your ID has been sent. You do not have to wait for the ID to be approved, but a person reviewing a certificate compares the name on it with the name on your ID, so the ID has to be there.
For each qualification you will be asked for:
- What it is called, for example National Diploma in Electrical Engineering.
- The type: degree, diploma, professional licence or registration, trade test (Class 1, 2 or 3), certificate or short course, or other.
- Where it came from, such as the college, university or licensing body, and the year it was awarded.
- An expiry date, if it has one. Licences renew, degrees do not. Leave it empty if it never expires.
- A photo or PDF of the document.
A person on our team reads the document, checks that it matches your ID and that the details you typed are right, and confirms the expiry date against the paper. When a qualification is filed our team is alerted at once, and you are told we have received it.
Once confirmed, clients see its name, the institution and the year on your profile. They never see the document itself. If it earns you a higher badge, that is applied by our team as part of the same decision.
Adding another one later
You can add as many qualifications as you hold, at any time. A new licence, a course you finished last month, a trade test you have just passed: file it the same way. Each one is reviewed on its own, so a pending qualification never hides the button to add the next, and a rejected one never affects the ones already confirmed.
Renewals, expiry and taking one down
A licence is not permanent. Registrations with bodies such as ZERA, EIZ and ZCSA renew every year, so a qualification with an expiry date is checked against it.
- Once the date passes, the qualification stops showing to clients and stops counting towards your badge.
- This is handled by a check that runs by itself early every morning. When it takes a qualification down it tells you, so you can renew and file the new one.
- You cannot extend an expiry date on a confirmed qualification yourself. Only our team can change it, against the document.
- You can remove any qualification yourself at any time. If it is the last confirmed one you hold, your badge steps back to ID verified, and you are warned before you confirm.
The timeline: what runs by itself, and where a person steps in
Graft runs on a mix of automatic clocks and human decisions. The dividing line is simple. Software keeps time and does the tidying. People make every judgment about you.
The moment you submit an ID or a qualification
- Automatic: the files are checked by content, stored privately, the team is alerted and you get a receipt.
Usually within 24 hours
- A person: reviews your ID and selfie, or your qualification, and makes the decision. You are notified of the result with a reason if it is a no.
Every morning
- Automatic: qualifications past their expiry date are taken down, badges are corrected if they rested on one, and you are told so you can renew.
Every hour, on jobs and payments
- Automatic: a task nobody accepted is closed after 30 days and its owner is told to repost it.
- Automatic: a hire that is not paid for within 24 hours is cancelled and the job is reopened so other workers can offer.
- Automatic: if a client neither confirms nor disputes finished work within 72 hours, the payment is released to the worker, unless a dispute is open. An open dispute stops the clock.
- Automatic: a boosted profile or task returns to normal when its boost ends.
Whenever something goes wrong
- Automatic: a message that appears to contain a phone number or other contact detail is blocked before it is sent.
- A person: every dispute is read and decided by our team on the evidence. Every report about a user is read by our team. Nothing is decided by software alone.
The pattern is on purpose. A clock is fair when everyone knows what it is in advance, so the ones that touch your money are the same for everyone and are written down here. Anything that says something about who you are, what you are qualified to do, or who was right in a disagreement is done by a human being who can be asked to explain.
Getting it done quickly
- Submit your ID and selfie together, in good light, and check them before you send.
- File your qualifications straight after, while you have the documents to hand.
- Put an expiry date on anything that renews, so it is never taken down without warning.
- If something is not approved, read the reason and resubmit. There is no limit on tries and no penalty.
Verified workers are hired more often, and verified clients are the ones workers are happy to work for. Start from your profile and it should take you about ten minutes. If you get stuck, the Help page will put you in touch with our team.
